The Rite of Spring: The
Music of Modernity

By Gillian Moore

Apollo

208 pp

Gillian Moore CBE, director
of music at Southbank
Centre, tackles one of the
most (in)famous works
of all time in this stylish,
compact, beautifully and
tastefully illustrated book.
Moore tackles the score
from multiple angles, giving
plenty of space to context,
while also including a relevant discography and
bibliography
(the usual suspects, Taruskin and Hill; but also
the more recent
Indiana University Press The Rite of
Springat 100). Moore’s
sources are beautifully up to date, including a
section on the
recently discovered Funeral Song as a
missing link between early
Stravinsky and the clear masterpieces of the
Ballets Russes.

Most relevant in the discography is the
Mariinsky/Gergiev DVD
Stravinsky and the Ballets Russes, in
which Millicent Hudson
and Kenneth Archer reproduce Nijinsky’s original
choreography
(it is coupled with Fokine’s Firebird).
After an examination of
‘What was so new?’ (musical architecture, melody,
harmony
and of course rhythm are examined in turn), Moore
gives a
listening guide (‘TheRite
step-by-step’). Following her account
of the music itself with the Nijinsky
choreography DVD at hand
is highly recommended; the impact, for example,
of the jagged
movements of the Sorceress in ‘Augurs of Spring’
can only be
fully appreciated in this way.

Contextualising TheRite speaks of
Moore’s strengths, and
she goes right back to the 1825 Decembrists and
Tolstoy; it
is, however, the ‘after-shocks’ that provide the
most food for
thought. These range from the reactions of
today’s conductors
(Salonen, Gražinytė-Tyla, Alsop, Jurowski) to the
work’s ‘shadow,’
extending from Prokofiev (Ada and Lolly)
through Varèse
(Amériques), Antheil (Ballet
méchanique) and on to Charlie
Parker, Joni Mitchell, Zappa and further to the
Russian folk-metal
of Arkona (Yarilo). There is, she is
correct to say, an ‘intimidating’
mountain of musicology both analytical and
historical, over The Rite; Moore’s writing offers a way in,
perhaps, inviting one to dig
ever deeper into Stravinsky’s seminal score.

From a Cocteau line drawing to a Roerich imagined
portrait
of prehistory to Walt Disney, illustrations
consistently stimulate
and illuminate; Moore’s enthusiasm and trademark
clarity
are everywhere. This is, as a rival concert
organisation to the
Southbank might say, ‘Total Immersion’.